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Comment

So I too like wayland but it is apparently still not in a usable state.

On the bright side, you likely won't be using that compositor when Wayland goes mainstream anyway. It'll be the compositor built into (or, alternatively, using) the Qt or Gtk framework, depending on which environment you're using. 😸

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The GPL tends to prevent companies from putting themselves in the situation where they have anything to give back. I think Michael has a write-up about how this was happening with GCC.

Really? I find that in reality it's the exact opposite, compare the company support for GCC (GPLv3) where we have IBM, Red Hat, CodeSourcery, Suse, Intel, AMD, Google etc are all contributing, many of them with full-time employees working on GCC. Meanwhile LLVM (BSD-style licence) has corporate backing from Apple, and the reason Apple started supporting llvm/clang is that they want to incorporate it into their proprietary compiler solutions (XCode), which they couldn't do with GCC (read up on Jobs ObjC gcc frontend debacle). Despite LLVM having been around for 11+ years it hasn't attracted any real corporate backing outside of Apple, so on the contrary I'd say companies prefer cooperating under GPL (where everyone must share their enhacements) rather than BSD (where companies can take the enhancements provided by others and keep their own to themselves).

That said, I think LLVM is great, and apart from the much warranted competition it offers, it also functions as the de facto standard JIT-framework for foss projects so in that respect it's already a core part of the open source ecosystem.

BTW, where was this article you were talking about?

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Really? I find that in reality it's the exact opposite, compare the company support for GCC (GPLv3) where we have IBM, Red Hat, CodeSourcery, Suse, Intel, AMD, Google etc are all contributing, many of them with full-time employees working on GCC. Meanwhile LLVM (BSD-style licence) has corporate backing from Apple, and the reason Apple started supporting llvm/clang is that they want to incorporate it into their proprietary compiler solutions (XCode), which they couldn't do with GCC (read up on Jobs ObjC gcc frontend debacle).

First, you're confusing LLVM with Clang. Clang uses LLVM, but LLVM is not Clang, and they do not do the same things at all. GCC is not comparable to LLVM on its own, as GCC is a complete compiler and LLVM is not.

Second, many companies are using and contributing to LLVM besides Apple. That includes several of those same companies that you list as GCC supporters. Not to mention larger Open Source projects using LLVM that are also backed by many of those companies you listed. In fact, the only company you listed that isn't either directly or indirectly supporting LLVM to my knowledge is CodeSourcery (and maybe they are and I simply don't know about it). You're not going to see direct support on the compiler from companies like Red hat or Suse simply because they were already suppoyrting GCC long before anyone even thought of Clang and have no reason to switch at this time; it's not because GCC's license somehow makes it more palatable to them.

Third, Clang is not being backed by Apple solely (or even primarily) because of the license. Clang is being backed because RMS is a douchebag that intentionally sabotaged the usefulness of GCC for years out of fear of evil proprietary code monkeys, making it impossible to use GCC for all of the very cool things that Clang is explicitly designed to support. If Clang where LGPL or even GPL Apple would be just as happy to use it (and in fact Apple has had no problem with the GPLv2). The Clang Xcode integration (which still uses GCC for its compiler by default, iirc) is happening because Clang actually makes that kind of integration possible in the first place while GCC is utterly incapable of being used for IDE code-completion and the like (independent of the actual license and purely due to architecture and the politics that enforce that shitty architecture in order to more strongly enforce an ideology).

Comment

Clang is being backed because RMS is a douchebag that intentionally sabotaged the usefulness of GCC for years out of fear of evil proprietary code monkeys

Ehh...you lost me. How is sabotaging a compiler with a less permissive license, then switching to (and improving) a compiler with a more permissive license, going to hurt "evil proprietary code monkeys"?